


Filling the Hollow

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fable (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Crawler has been defeated. Aurora flourishes under the Good King's rule. What has Kalin to say to the former Tyrant King Logan now, and what will Logan do with the rest of his life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filling the Hollow

His brother had frowned in dissatisfaction when Logan refused to be forthright about his plans. They'd congregated briefly around Walter Beck's large, imposing stone figure, Logan and his brother the King, and Ben Finn, and Page; Page folded her arms under her breasts and only addressed Logan's brother, and Ben barely spared him a glance before _casually_  following in Page's footsteps away from the castle. And Logan spoke only of 'going', of 'rebuilding his life'.

"Where will you go?" and Logan recognised that tone, the undercurrent of 'Who will have you, but me?' And he was only more determined to put a fathomless sea between him and fair Albion, and that infernal _Reaver_ with his blood-stone heart, and the palpable pall he cast over any village he wandered into.

The Auroran sun beams scalding and unobscured as the ship grinds into port, and Logan self-consciously rakes inky black hair away from a damp forehead, following the stream of moneyed Aurorans and curious vacationers to the city gates.

It happens slowly, and without preamble. The thick blade presses flat against his breastbone, and the coarse voice feathers hot breath over his ear. The crowd files around them in an orderly fashion, eyes trained ahead, studiously ignorant of the interruption of Logan's passage through the stone gates. "What are _you_ doing here."

"I want no trouble," sighs Logan, eyes flicking to see the guard, to capture his gaze.

"What you _want_  and what you _receive_  are not always in agreement, no? Isn't that a lesson _we_ have come to learn?" The sneer in his tone is not as wounding as he likely hoped. Logan had plenty of practice in deflecting verbal barbs.

"Let me speak to Kalin. Let Kalin tell me that I am not allowed within these walls..."

"Why would she want you here? Surely she would spit upon your very face--"

"That would not be a proper way for a leader to behave," and at the sound of that stern, husky voice, the guard immediately withdraws, although his contemptuous glare falters not. Kalin's hand grasps his shoulder firmly, squeezes until the gaze breaks. "Stand down, Talim. I would, indeed, have words with Albion's... royal scourge."

Some verbal barbs still found their mark. Logan finds it difficult to meet the woman's eyes as she regards him, without malice or welcome. Finally, she beckons him onward, through the gates, into the shade of tall stone buildings and the maze of meandering paths.  
The silence gives Logan an opportunity to marshal his thoughts and his strength and his conviction; his eyes flick from one sight to the other without absorbing. His ears are barely attuned, the distrustful stares and jeers of Auroran children no more remarkable than the low singing of housewives as they go about their laundering or the melodious barking of vendors. People step out of their paths because of Kalin, because they respect and love Kalin, because Kalin is their demi-queen, their advocate, their saviour.

Logan avoids looking into the faces of people that were taught to hate him, and traces Kalin's footfalls all the way to her dwelling.

"You shouldn't be here," she admonishes him when they are inside. Simultaneously, she offers him a fragrant wineskin.

"I had to come. The Crawler is gone, no thanks to me, of course. But I'd hoped you'd be more receptive to my words once the darkness was defeated..."

"And why is that?" Calm voice, quietly firm voice, a voice Logan cannot read, cannot react to. Kalin's painted visage is placid, moving stone, moving art. "Do you think this changes things, this safety and security my people and I have now? Do you think I am not furious with you still?"

"No! You _should_  be, I betrayed you, I betrayed Aurora -- but you must understand, surely! I had to choose between what I wanted and what Albion needed..." He steps closer in his ardour, black brows drawn and free hand curled in beseeching, and Kalin stays him with a hand planted in the centre of his chest.

"I _know_  you, Logan," she whispers, shaking her head. Her expression doesn't change, but Logan withers at the pity he sees in it. He knows her, too. "You make decisions with the fire in your heart and try to retract them with the ice in your mind. You fall back upon 'duty' and 'necessity' when you realise you are not a god, and everyone suffers for your folly.  
You think I haven't seen inside you, Logan?"

He is dimly startled to find that he is trembling. Kalin, the woman who could stay him with a hand and a word, the impossibly immovable rock that failed to respond to his fumbling attentions, compassion wrapped in sternness and a heart of rarest gold that no mine he erected could unearth. When he'd plunged himself into her, she'd plunged her hands into the heart of him, drew him out, drew out the coiled mass of dichotomous yearnings and broken things in the same hour that her body drew the orgasm out of him. And when he'd been spent, she pressed her fingers to his lips and bid him sleep. And before he was swallowed by a more benign darkness than that which had found him much earlier, he'd heard her resigned words. _"Perhaps you will realise that you cannot save us. Perhaps not. I hope, for your sake, you do."_

The words made no sense to him then. They made slightly more sense now.

"You wanted to be a saviour, you wanted to please people, you wanted to be _loved_. For that alone, you should not have been a king."

He remembers Reaver's husky chuckle as he curled his pale leg around the backs of Logan's thighs and drew him in. _"Oh, come now, you've given me quite enough already, Your Majesty... oooh, slow down, yes, there's a lad... mmmh."_  
But he'd not objected to the first factories being signed over to him, and Logan didn't dare look Ernest Faraday in the eye as the professor ranted and pleaded and finally threatened, threatened soundly as the cell doors creaked shut and Logan's guards led him away from Ravenscar Keep. But Reaver's eyes he met as they shook hands at the coronation of Reaver Industries, Reaver whose dry little smile was both a balm and a dagger.

"Might I also add that this is the only time I've ever seen my words and warnings sink in? Too late, much too late."

Logan's consciousness returns to the present, his throat tight and his expression drawn. Kalin drops her hand, but the pressure on his chest doesn't let up. She takes his arm, leads him to a high-backed chair, sits him down. Lifts the wineskin to his lips, bids him drink. He sits as he once sat on the throne of Albion, legs spread, head cradled in his left hand, sombre and _exhausted_.

"I have no further need to chastise you, Logan. Things are well here. My people flourish, the sun shines under their skin, the children laugh and paint the walls with their coloured chalk and they paint stories of a brave and noble King who saved them and their families from certain death..." Logan's chest grows ever-tighter, hand curling into his hair. "And perhaps you have indeed learnt your lesson. But what good will that do you? What will you do with this knowledge? Am I correct in assuming that you left Albion because Albion no longer needed you to vilify, now that things were well and the throne was clean of old blood?"

Logan starts to speak, then closes his mouth again. Kalin kneels beside him, and the ghost of compassion that he had always hoped to see has finally suffused her face. "Hate is not an adequate substitute for love, but it behaves much the same. Take away the reason for the hatred, and you are invisible.  
I know all this because I never loved or hated you. My eyes are clear. I love my people and I hate being betrayed, and those are my sole motivations. They have served me well.  
What do _you_  love, Logan?"

"I... I love my brother, of course..." _Of course._ Kalin nods, waits for him to continue. "...Travelling. I was envious of him for his travels, his ability to affect many people in many places. I did the same, but in a much different manner..."

"So travel, then.  
The world is yours. As time goes on, people will cease hating you, and that will give them an opportunity to love you -- as you are, not as you were. Go far from here, and slowly work your way back. By the time the black in your hair has faded to grey, you may have given Albion a reason to speak your name with respect and love again."

Logan feels bolstered by the quiet assurance in Kalin's voice, a voice that, like Theresa's, echoes knowledge he could never fathom. His dark eyes meet hers for the first time. "And you?"

"Just go, Logan. Come back to us when you feel you are ready. Tell me of your adventures, of the things you've seen and learnt. There will always be a place for you here." Logan understood her 'here'; it spoke of more than just the land of Aurora, but the landscape of her labyrinthine heart. Not all of it was for him, but it was an honour to be given even the smallest bit of real estate in it.

The sun settles orange and swollen on the horizon as Kalin watches the former Tyrant King of Albion board the ship, bound to lands yet unnamed. She smiles, a tiny twitch of her lips that Logan can still see from where he stands on the ship's deck, and bows -- bows the way she once did to him, the way she does to the current king. It is a gesture of respect, not inherited or taken, but earned.


End file.
